Study Touts the Benefits of Anti-Drug Curriculum in Junior High

At a time of widespread skepticism about whether schools can do
anything to prevent young people from using drugs, a study released
here last week offers some hope.

Researchers at Cornell University Medical College have produced what
they say is the first evidence that an anti-drug curriculum for junior
high school students showed long-term benefits. Students who underwent
a prevention program taught by regular classroom teachers used less
tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana years later than their peers who did
not take part in the program, the researchers found.

The six-year study followed nearly 3,600 New York State students who
went through the prevention program, known as life-skills training. By
the 12th grade, those students were less likely than the
nonparticipants to be serious drug users, both in terms of heavy
consumption of a single substance and in the use of multiple drugs.

The research appeared in the April 12 issue of the Journal of the
American Medical Association.

While the program curbed drug use among students in the overall
sample, the results were particularly striking for the 66 percent of
participating students who received what the researchers determined was
a more complete version of the intervention program.

For example, among that group:

Pack-a-day cigarette smoking was 25 to 33 percent lower than among
peers who did not undergo the program at all

Drunkenness (measured by at least one such incident a month) was 23
to 30 percent lower.

Weekly marijuana use was 44 percent lower.

Weekly use of cigarettes, alcohol, and tobacco together was
two-thirds lower.

The study "provides important new evidence that a
drug-abuse-prevention program conducted during junior high
school can produce meaningful and durable reduction in drug
use," Gilbert J. Botvin, the study's principal author, told
reporters at a news conference here last week.

"These findings are in stark contrast to the prevailing myth
that nothing works, that prevention is a waste of time and
effort," said Mr. Botvin, a professor of public health and
psychiatry at Cornell.

"If approaches such as this were widely disseminated and
used by schools across the country, it's our estimate that
roughly 100,000 lives could be saved each and every year" by
reducing the number of smokers alone, he said.

The students in the study were predominantly white and
middle class, but other research by the Cornell team found
similar positive effects--at least in the short term--for
inner-city minority students, Mr. Botvin said.

Review and Reinforcement

The study began in 1985 when 5,954 7th graders in 56
suburban and rural schools around Albany, Syracuse, and Long
Island entered the prevention program.

When the students were 12th graders, the researchers tracked
down 3,597 of them--about 60 percent of the original group.

At both points, students were asked to report their own drug
use and were given breath tests for cigarette smoking.

Schools were randomly assigned to either treatment or
control groups, and teachers received a one-day training
workshop or were given a two-hour videotape.

Classroom teachers taught the program over the course of 15
class periods in the 7th grade.

Students in the prevention group also received "booster"
sessions in the 8th and 9th grades for review and
reinforcement.

The program costs about $8 to $10 per student per year.

Mr. Botvin cited two key factors that contributed to the
program's success: the number and multiyear nature of the
lessons, and the kind of lessons given.

The curriculum gave students information and skills for
resisting social pressure to use drugs. Through demonstrations
and role-playing, students learned not only what to say to
refuse drugs but also the tone and body language to use, said
Mr. Botvin.

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